Apart from the colossal proportions of so many of them, the buildings of Ramses II. are distinguished by another trait. They were erected to the glory of the Pharaoh rather than of the gods. It is the name and titles of Ramses that everywhere force themselves upon our notice, and often constitute the chief decoration of the monument. He must have been vainglorious above all other kings of Egypt, filled with the pride of his own power and the determination that his name should never be forgotten upon the earth. It is not strange, therefore, that Ramses II. should be the most prominent figure in ancient Egyptian history. His name and the shattered relics of his architectural triumphs force themselves upon the attention of the traveller wherever he goes. His long reign, moreover, was a period of great literary activity, and a considerable portion of the literary papyri which have survived to us was written during his lifetime. He was, furthermore, the last of the conquering Pharaohs; the last of the Theban monarchs whose rule was obeyed from the mountains of Lebanon and the plateau of the Haurân to the southern frontiers of Ethiopia. With his death the empire, which had been founded by the military skill and energy of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, began to pass away. His son and successor, Meneptah, had to struggle for bare existence against an invasion of barbarian hordes, and the sceptre dropped from the feeble hands of Seti II., who next followed, into those of rival kings. The nineteenth dynasty ended in the midst of civil war and foreign attack: for a while Egypt submitted to the rule of a Syrian stranger, and when Setnekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty, restored once more the native line of kings, he found a ruined and impoverished country, scarcely able to protect itself from hostile assault. But the age of the twentieth dynasty was still distant when Jacob and his sons journeyed into Egypt, or even when his descendants, under the leadership of Moses, succeeded in escaping from the land of their slavery. Before that age arrived more than one revolution was destined to pass over the valley of the Nile, which had momentous consequences for the foreign settlers in Goshen. The Hyksos were driven back into Asia, and a united Egypt once more obeyed the rule of a native Pharaoh.